A Life Worth Working
Small Moments, Big Work
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A Life Worth Working:
Small Moments, Big Work
Today, workers who are 55 and older are staying in the workforce at historically high rates, well into their late 60s and even 70s. And many of them average 12 job changes by the time they retire. Twelve.
Those who may be just starting out, our Gen Zers, as an example, will have to contend with even more job transitions as generative AI touches nearly every job in the workforce.
This future of work will be unsteady, and it will require constant adaptation. Young people may have to navigate 20 or 30 job changes to come.
Finding stability will be difficult enough. But the idea of finding and pursuing a fulfilling career amidst such rapid transformation will likely feel even more daunting.
Traditional career guidance simply won’t suffice for this future of work. So many of us today already get tripped up on the notion of finding purpose in our work lives. We talk about pursuing our passions and finding mission-driven companies to work for. We ultimately question: How do we live a life worth working?
I’m leaning into this question heavily because I think for all the trending conversations about AI, skills building, and the future of work, we don’t talk enough about the flourishing of our souls. I use souls as a placeholder for however you think about your inner life, your spirituality, or what moves and motivates you to behave in certain ways.
Navigating a life worth working forces us to consider the soul of work. Vocation itself is derived from a religious context. It comes from the Latin word, vocare, which means “to call.” Long ago, that calling referred specifically to full-time religious work.
What I learned through some recent research on Martin Luther, the seminal German theologian of the Protestant Reformation, is that he was especially critical of monastic hermits who spent most of their time in isolation — perfecting their devotional practices. Luther angrily interrogated: Who were they helping? He argued that these church practices missed the essence of faith, which should instead be tied to active service to others, not simply a retreat to cloistered spiritual practice. Luther proffered that the most powerful work of faith was to serve and love other people.
I allude to this, not from an evangelical perspective, but because Luther reminds us about the more pragmatic and selfless forms of work that go unacknowledged in our everyday lives — acts of service, caring, and love that don’t always connect directly to traditional forms of paid work.
In fact, from Luther’s perspective, caregiving for children, aging parents or partners, and those with special needs would be precisely the kind of service and love that distinguishes itself from the work of a monk in solitude. As Gene Edward Veith, Jr. summarizes so well: “Pastors, monks, nuns, and popes are no holier than farmers, shopkeepers, dairy maids, or latrine diggers… Genuine good works have to actually help someone.”
Finding our sense of purpose and mission doesn’t need to be connected to a sacred calling. Most of us won’t receive some sort of awesome signal in the world to assure us that we’re on the right track.
Could it be instead that the flourishing of our souls is tethered to this simple notion of serving, helping, and loving others?
What we do doesn’t have to be lofty or highly compensated work. We may be striving within our family, our town, our school, or anywhere we feel compelled to commit our time, energy, and feelings. Indeed, if we’re not careful, we may look too far into the future and miss what is hidden around us, even in the smallest things we do.
In Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation, Frederick Buechner writes, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
Each moment, no matter how seemingly mundane, offers an opportunity to lean into how we will actively serve others rather than deciding what we will do. As sensing humans, we have the privilege of caring for one another in whatever work is in store for us.
Small, everyday moments matter when we know whom we are serving. Finding the others in our lives will anchor us in our longer, more turbulent work lives and through a life journey that is leading us somewhere we cannot yet know.
Small work can be big soul work.
Dr. Michelle R. Weise is the author of Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet. To find out how you can work with Michelle, go to michelleweise.com.
I was raised in a Mennonite home and much of the ideas of service that you mention here resonate with me! Wonderful article!